The intellectual heart of UC Berkeley, the College of Letters and Science (L&S) is the largest of the university’s 14 colleges and schools and the most prestigious teaching and research unit in the UC system.

The College of Letters & Science stands at the heart of Berkeley’s intellectual preeminence and comprehensive excellence. Our continued leadership in education, research, and public service depends on private philanthropy.

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Divisions & Units - Mathematical & Physical Sciences

The international team that developed Jupyter, which was co-led by UC Berkeley’s Fernando Pérez, is now being recognized with the 2018 Software System Award from the Association of Computing Machinery, the world’s largest society of educational and academic computer scientists. Read more...

As North Korea’s president goes back and forth on “denuclearization,” an international team of scientists is publishing the most detailed view yet of the site of the country’s latest and largest underground nuclear test on Sept. 3, 2017. Rear more...

Graduating computer science major Luke Strgar thinks he might have a solution for the fraught issue of guns in America: use blockchain to track gun sales. And while many graduates were wrapping up final papers, Strgar spent two days in Washington, D.C. pitching his idea to legislative aides and think-tank analysts from all sides of the ideological spectrum.

A chemist, two neuroscientists, a geophysicist and a computer scientist at UC Berkeley are among 84 new members and 21 new foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences announced today. Read more...

Despite being one of two underrepresented minority scholars, and the only woman in Berkeley’s Nanoelectrics and Nanostructures Group, Amal El-Ghazaly is not isolated in her STEM field. She’s among 25 scholars from Berkeley, Stanford, Caltech and UCLA who have postdoctoral fellowships in the California Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate, a diverse, cross-institutional community of Ph.D. students, postdoc scholars and faculty members funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

"UC Berkeley researchers are using an exceptional stash of fossils found during the construction of a new East Bay dam to piece together a picture of what the Bay Area may have looked like some 15-20 million years ago." Read more...

While our research is always advancing and our teaching is always improving, our core needs remain constant. It is our people – faculty and students – who bring excellence to Berkeley, so funding for faculty positions and graduate student fellowships are our very top priorities.

A special lecture and panel discussion followed by a reception. Keynote speaker is Professor Tracy Johnson from UCLA. Event also features UCLA Professor Paul Barber, and UC Berkeley Professor Tyrone B. Hayes.